They coiled around him, slid along the scaly skin of his forearms, rubbed his cheeks with their slow, chill touch, making his blood pleasantly sluggish. He refrained from enjoyment and instead thought harder, more harshly, at them, until they left off and slid into the air duct, the blue glow lingering and finally extinguished when they passed some curve of the tunnel.

The ship said, “What are you doing?”

He looked away from the duct’s mouth, puzzled. “You couldn’t see them?”

“See what?”

“The ghosts.”

“I saw and sensed nothing.”

“Machines cannot perceive them, but I had forgotten you are a machine,” Lassite said. He folded the ghost bag neatly and put it inside his pack, on top of his other robe.

“I am a biomachine.”

“That is still a machine, and the fact that you could not see the ghosts proves my point. Perhaps this explains your attitude toward magic.”

“Perhaps you have gone insane,” the ship suggested, experiencing mild hostility, “due to recent stress. There was nothing there.”

“Perhaps,” Lassite said.

He changed hoods as well. The fresh one was clean and new, something he had saved for special occasions. He patted the wall of the ship as he left the chamber; it might be a machine, but it was part of the Spiral of Destiny too.

When he returned to the chamber where the others were, he noted they had all done the same as he, put on clean and formal clothes. He supposed the urge to look their best was somehow connected to survival—seduction, intimidation, and charm were the only weapons that couldn’t be taken away from them entirely.

Dabry and Niko both wore their dress blues, as did Gio. Milly wore light leather straps that didn’t interfere with her feathers for the most part, but with hooks that it took him a moment to figure out—a bandolier from which she’d removed whatever weapons it normally held. Skid was freshly bathed in her skin seal liquid, smelling of vanilla, as though she were one of Dabry’s cookies.

Atlanta wore a jumpsuit extruded for her by the ship: shirt, trousers, and boots, all the same subdued brown and emblazoned with the ship’s logo in black. Thorn and Talon were fully human and dressed in the same clothing as Atlanta, which made Lassite think that the captain hoped to conceal their true nature.

He knew her attempt would not succeed.